In the continuous trimming of elongated articles small strips of scrap material trimmed from the articles tend to be themselves continuous and elongated. With many materials, however, the strips periodically segment themselves due to their own size, shape, weight and brittleness. With other materials, though, the continuous trimmings or strips do not self-break and segment. In such cases manual or machine segmentation may be required to facilitate handling and deposition of the long, continuous strips. For example, chip breakers are often mounted to lathes to coil work-hardened, scrap metal trimmed from workpieces until they crack and segment. In other cases, as in the textile industry, fibrous trimmings are automatically segmented by cutters.
The fabrication of metal bars is another industrial manufacturing process that often requires a trimming operation. For example, in casting copper bars from molten copper, flashing is often formed extending from corners of the bars. Furthermore, due to the fact that the bar material forming the sharp corners of cast bars tends to cool quicker than the rest of the bar material, poor grain structure is often produced at such corners. This can, in turn, be the cause of breaks occurring as where the bar is reduced in size and drawn into wire. Thus bar corners too, particularly those forming acute angles which give rise to significantly more rapid cooling than the rest of the bar, are also often trimmed.
Heretofore, cast copper bars have been trimmed by advancing the bars supported on rollers through a cutting station where one or more blades are fixedly positioned to trim one or more surface or corners of the bars. This is typically done while the copper is still at an elevated temperature from the casting operation. The strips of materials trimmed from the bar then curl aside of the advancing bar and onto the adjacent floor or into a disposal chute. Being continuous the strips must be periodically segmented to facilitate handling. This has been done manually by workmen with the use of long rods struck against the hot strips and this continuous use of manpower has proved to be both costly and risky.